


Might It Be

by shineebigbang



Category: SHINee
Genre: Fantasy, Friendship, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 08:11:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11963295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineebigbang/pseuds/shineebigbang
Summary: Eunsook never planned on going to camp. She never planned on maybe, accidentally, becoming a witch either.





	Might It Be

There's no camp counselors, not _really_. It seemed like there were on the first, to help direct people to their cabins and to show them around the grounds and tell them the history of the forest and the camp itself. But once everyone had settled down, all of the counselors seemed to disappear into the mist. No one seemed to find this strange.

Eunsook, along with a few others, was appointed to be a cabin leader, a position that was never explained to her, along with a set of "responsibilities" that appeared to be largely nonexistent. Cabin assignments are more of a suggestion than anything and after a few days, people were switching cabins and beds with others to be with their newly acquired friends. Aside from a few foretold announcements about meals that never actually come, no one looks after them or watches over them in any way.

This shouldn't be a huge surprise, considering most - if not all - people at the camp are in their 20s, but this camp is like no camp that Eunsook's ever heard of. They're all on their own.

Eunsook is somewhat of a loner; she's quiet and keeps to herself and has never really had an easy time making friends. So instead, she doesn't. She sits in the shade and reads or goes on hikes in the forest through the officially sectioned off trails. If she happens to spend all day by her lonesome, then it's certainly not going to be Eunsook complaining, even if _is_ a bit too quiet.

She's not offended when the ones that speak to her aren't really looking for another person to add to their group because she's not particularly looking for anyone to add to her party of one. Of course, Eunsook gets that camp is supposed to be a place where you make friends and do crafts and go swimming in a lake and sing songs around a bonfire while making friendship bracelets or something but this... this is not exactly a normal camp. At least, it doesn't seem like one. So, she goes off on her own and wonders whether she'll find a phone or cell reception first.

And then one day, it changes.

A girl that Eunsook recognizes from her cabin comes over and sits deliberately next to her in the dining hall. They don't speak for a few minutes and it's a bit weird as Eunsook tries not to knock elbows with her while they eat but then the girl turns towards her and introduces herself.

"Hi," she says brightly, thrusting her hand out and nearly knocking over Eunsook's glass. "I'm Taeyeon."

Eunsook grabs her hand and they shake, her voice quiet as she tells Taeyeon her name. And then immediately Taeyeon is asking her about where she lives and she makes an offhand mention about how weird the camp is and complains about the electricity cutting out every so often in their cabin and Eunsook is caught up in a whirlwind of complaining that the showers never get quite hot enough, how the bread tastes a bit funny, and a mildly serious debate about whether or not those are actually owls hooting outside at night.

When the lights around the camp flick on and the dusty paths are near indistinguishable in the dark, Eunsook and Taeyeon make their way back to the cabin. The other girls are there already, lounging around in various states scattered about the room; Minjung is reading at the desk underneath Eunsook's bed and Gwiboon and Junghee are lying on Minjung's bed, playing cards and chatting quietly when Eunsook and Taeyeon enter.

Taeyeon grabs Eunsook's hand and pulls her over to the others and Eunsook sits on the bed as Junghee reshuffles the cards and deals them out to include Taeyeon after Eunsook politely, confusedly, declines. She feels a little lost because she's just been suddenly included in the group they've seem to have made up in her absence and while she's sure they're all very nice girls, she knows nothing about any of them. She's not even entirely certain she's exchanged more than five words with any of them before this.

With a muted sound, Minjung places her book down on the desk and sits next to Eunsook on the bed. The mattress is now crowded with five girls - three of whom are spread out and flopped over each other - and it's not like these beds are particularly spacious. Or comfortable for that matter. And yet here Eunsook is, squeezed in between a group of people she hardly knows and feeling more at home than she's felt in weeks and not knowing exactly why.

(Especially since they haven't been at camp for weeks and Eunsook's felt increasingly at odds in her own home.)

-

The camp grounds are an... odd place, but Eunsook can't really put her finger on why that is. They're not exactly deserted, but she hardly ever runs into other people outside of dinner and even then, even when the dining hall is packed and noisy, everything feels muted and hushed, like she's hearing all of the chatter from underwater.

The camp is nestled in the mountains and surrounded by a forest. It already seems magical before Eunsook learns that magick itself is real and not just the stuff of fairytales. Everything is wooden and the trees and rocks are covered in moss. She knows there are owls here, foxes, rabbits, deer, birds. The forest is alight with the noise of the wilderness and sometimes Eunsook opens one of the windows in the cabin and just listens.

At first, there are many people. She's sure that there were dozens of people when she first arrived, telling them the history of the grounds and showing them the facilities. She remembers a young man telling a small group of them about the activities they'd be there doing at the camp and a pair of young women that sorted them into their cabins the first time. She knows that there were two other girls in the cabin with her before Junghee and Taeyeon showed up to take their places but she can't recall much else. She's doesn't think she's seen them since but she can't be sure.

There are people in the dining hall in the morning and even more in the evening, but she never sees them enter or leave after her. The grounds are quiet, only the wind through the trees and the chittering of small animals, the crunch of her shoes on the dirt interrupting the silence as she walks back to her cabin. The hinges on the door complain when she opens it, a low groan of rusty metal and water-swollen wood. The window sticks when she opens it, and again when it closes, and the single chair at the desk creaks when any weight is placed on it. All of this is noisy in the silence that isn't really quiet at all.

-

Gwiboon is the first one that Eunsook takes notice of. It's impossible not to really - Gwiboon is a loud girl with loud clothes and a spirit about her that is at odd with the gloomy atmosphere of the camp. Her voice is authoritative and self-assured and her things are bright and eclectic. By the end of the day, her things are scattered about the cabin with hopeless abandon, encroaching on Eunsook's tidy space with their flung about lack of care.

Junghee, she notices next, because she is brought in by Gwiboon and because it is, of course, impossible not to notice Gwiboon. Unlike Gwiboon who looks like a model with her perfect short hair and strange clothes, everything about Junghee looks soft; her cotton candy pink hair, her overlarge black clothes, the soft and comfortable way she speaks. But Junghee is loud too, as Eunsook quickly learns, as their laughter rings throughout the small cabin room.

Another girl's spot was taken by Junghee, the two of them switching cabins against the roster's demands. The girl had gone easily and Eunsook hadn't even learned her name nor hardly even what she looked like before the girl had tugged her suitcase out the door to wherever her new bed was going to be. Eunsook's not entirely sure they're even allowed to switch or if any of the counselors were alerted to the change but she figures that it's not her problem either way.

Taeyeon does the same thing two days later, taking the bed beneath Junghee's and keeping mostly to herself. Her messy hair is a fading shade of blue and it quickly appears that every piece of clothing she owns is the same shade of black. She seems somewhat introverted and disinterested in making friends, but then Eunsook's never around anyway to see whether or not that's really true. It turns out that it isn't true at all when she comes back one evening after dinner to find Junghee hanging over the bunk and conversing upside down with a grinning Taeyeon.

She only notices Minjung last because of how quiet the girl is. Minjung is tall and near constantly dressed in sweaters that would look sloppy on Eunsook but somehow, she manages to make them look sharp instead. Eunsook thinks that every time she's seen Minjung since they arrived at camp, Minjung has had a book in her hand. Minjung is silent and serious and the contrast in her behavior is even more apparent with her bed being right beneath Gwiboon's bunk. Eunsook sees them talking one morning, arguing in an amiable, familiar sort of way and later learns that they knew each other before this. They make a strange pair and Eunsook puts it out of her mind.

-

Their cabin is somewhat isolated from the others, perched in the middle of a clearing of trees, tall grass stretching high around the back. They have a bathroom attached to it and, for some reason, another one about twenty feet away. The bathroom in their cabin contains only a single toilet, sink, and shower, while the one outside has several separate stalls. Sometimes, when Gwiboon or Taeyeon take too long and are in danger of using up all the hot water before anyone else has a chance to shower, Eunsook, Junghee, and Minjung will go to the outside bathroom and shower there. It's a weird experience, walking freshly showered, hair still dripping, through the mist and across the rocky ground.

Inside the cabins, the wood is soft and cool, heavy with the presence of the never-ending mist. At night, when the sun dips (if it was ever even there during the day), the thick comforters cocoon them in warmth. Eunsook stares at her camp-issued blanket, a thin, moth bitten fleece monstrosity, and is glad that Junghee and Gwiboon snuck into the administration office on site to bring the comforters back. Without them, Eunsook is sure they would have quickly frozen at night. (Or, at the very least, she'd have been very cold and disgruntled. Looking at the others though, Eunsook really can't say she minds the idea of needing to huddle for warmth on the small beds.)

The dining hall is a small, unassuming building, the ceiling inside impossibly stretching towards the skies with towering wooden beams. There is a series of charts on one wall, relegating the points that each cabin has somehow earned for themselves for good behavior or rule abiding campers. Eunsook's cabin is losing. She can't muster up the strength to try to care when she knows they leave the heater on every time they leave or, if they've left it off, how Minjung will sneak back in or leave last so she can turn it back on.

They leave their clothes to dry over the warm pipes near the ceiling and all of their stuff is scattered about the cabin endlessly. Piles of contraband snacks are heaped in precarious mounds near their suitcases. Junghee and Gwiboon have littered the windows with drawings and scribbles and colored tracing paper left in a mosaic of faux stained glass. Taeyeon's socks always end up beneath Eunsook's desk and the bells from her numerous chokers quietly jingle where they're hung over one of the rungs of her bed from a phantom breeze that creeps in through a crack in the window. The small room is always filled with the heady, comforting smell of marjoram and lavender wafting from the doorway and beneath each of their pillows, courtesy of Minjung.

So, yes, Eunsook understands why the strange Toadstool cabin is dead last in the ranking. What she can't understand is how any of the other cabins get points when no counselors (nor, sometimes, any other campers) are anywhere to be found.

-

Eunsook watches the other girls. It's curious to see the way they interact with each other, the familiar and easy way they fill the space around each other even though none of them knew each other more than a few weeks ago. Minjung and Gwiboon had known each other they'd said, Gwiboon pushing Minjung when the younger girl slyly commented that they'd been classmates once. Eunsook had looked on in interest as Junghee had asked them about it. The way they treat each other, teasing and bickering and shoving and playful, is as if they were sisters. Eunsook looks on at them, jealousy vaguely threatening to appear, and wishes not for the first time that she wasn't an only child. But she's not alone here and the others make sure to remind her of that in the way that Taeyeon tugs on her hand, in the way that Gwiboon brushes out her hair, in the way that Minjung hugs her, in the way that Junghee straightens out her clothes when she's taken a tumble.

She's nothing special.

Eunsook is nothing special and so she's profoundly confused as to why these girls would choose _her_ over anyone else. She's captivated by them in a way she never has been before and the feeling seems to be, somehow, mutual?

-

It was only little things at first. Eunsook noticed the candles littering the desk and windowsill, and the charms dangling from bedposts. She heard the faint scratching of pen on paper and saw the careful way Junghee removed her jewelry at the end of the day. It was just little things, small things that caught her attention and then slipped out of her memory as quiet and unassuming as a mouse. The girls were peculiar - she already knew that. But that was fine.

It wasn't until something strongly resembling an altar began to gather on a table in the corner of the room that something flipped on in Eunsook's head.

She caught sight of the carefully arranged collection of objects one morning as she gathered some of her wayward things from around the room.

Eunsook shut the door to the bathroom heavily, leaning back against it and distantly praying that someone would come back soon. No - that no one would come back yet.

Taeyeon, still slumbering away messily in her room, was completely unaware of Eunsook's breakdown happening in the bathroom.

Eunsook, not exactly thinking clearly, shakes Taeyeon awake.

"Taeyeon," she hisses, grabbing the girl's shoulder. There's no reason to keep quiet with the other girls gone, but Eunsook's sense of urgency is prevailing above her sense of reason. "Taeyeon wake up."

Taeyeon releases a deep, gurgling sort of noise, and shoves her face into the pillow.

"Taeyeon." Eunsook's voice raises, slightly shrill She shakes Taeyeon harder, Taeyeon's head rolling limply on her neck.

Eunsook shakes her harder and finally Taeyeon's hand comes up, batting her away. She cracks one eye open, fixing Eunsook with a bleary and somewhat murderous stare.

"What," she croaks

"Taeyeon," Eunsook hisses again, leaning in closer. "There's something weird going on."

She looks around the empty room suspiciously, a tad frantic, before leaning in even closer.

"I think our roommates are devil worshippers!"

"Wha...?"

Taeyeon makes an apathetic, sleepy sound and rolls over, facing the wall.

"Taeyeon!" Eunsook reaches over and grabs her shoulder once more. Taeyeon looks at her through barely slit eyes and flaps a hand at her in a vague show of indifference.

"Satanists!" Eunsook cries, throwing her hands in the air. She points over at the altar sitting innocuously in the corner. "Magic! Ritual sacrifice! Demons!"

Taeyeon, clearly not listening, has closed her eyes and is surreptitiously trying to either bury her head under her pillow or smother herself. Eunsook pulls at Taeyeon's arm, a diatribe of misdirected worry pouring from her lips in a frenzied speech as she yanks the other girl, futilely trying to wake her up properly.

The door cracks and Eunsook spins around, falling silent, to see Minjung standing in the doorway brushing leaves from the hems of her pants. When Minjung looks up, their eyes meet and Eunsook flushes heavily, her hands curling into fists. She can feel her nails biting into her palms.

Minjung eyes the room, her gaze darting from Eunsook's red face and messy hair to Taeyeon hanging halfway off the bed, soft snores punctuating the roaring silence.

Her eyes back on Eunsook, she asks hesitantly, "what's going on?"

Eunsook bites her lip and takes only a moment to decide before she breaks out into a smile and assures Minjung that it's nothing, nothing at all. She can tell that Minjung doesn't believe her but the other girl lets it drop.

She should have known Minjung wouldn't leave it completely alone.

Eunsook slips out for a little bit, using the fresh air to clear her head, and comes back to Minjung and Taeyeon whispering, Taeyeon's hair a complete and utter mess as she pushes it out of her face. Later that day, she sees Minjung pull Gwiboon aside, her face grave as the two of them talk quietly.

Gwiboon approaches her later that night.

"What's going on with you?" Gwiboon asks, cutting to the chase. She's sat herself down on the edge of her bed while the other girls are out showering and for someone swathed in oversized pajamas, Gwiboon cuts an intimidating figure.

Eunsook suddenly becomes very interested in the book in her hands.

"What do you mean?" she mumbles. Her fingers toy at the edge of the page.

"I mean you're acting all weird and Taeyeon says you basically assaulted her in bed this morning."

Eunsook glances at Gwiboon in time to catch the bemused eyebrow raise before her eyes dart back, unmoving, to her book. She flips a page, having taken in none of the words whatsoever.

"I didn't assault her," she says, pretending to be focused on reading. "I just had a question."

Gwiboon leans back on her hands. "That's not what I hear."

Despite Gwiboon's direct nature, they seem to be beating around the bush and she's tired of it - if the other girls are going to sacrifice her or curse her or something, she wants to get this over with.

Suddenly angered, Eunsook snaps her book shut. "And what did you hear?"

"I heard you think we're all devil worshippers," Gwiboon answers, examining her nails. "And why would that be?" She finally looks up at Eunsook and her expression is so blasé that Eunsook grits her teeth.

Then she explodes.

"Because of your weird, creepy altar thing!" she says, waving an arm at the innocuous gathering of items still sitting in the corner. "Because of the crystals and the incense and all of your weird notebooks!"

She's standing now, pacing restlessly back and forth at the foot of the bed. And maybe it's not the smartest thing in the world to insult someone who may curse her to death but Eunsook is stranded out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest and fog, and if she's going to die it's not going to be quietly if she has anything to say about it.

"Don't think I haven't noticed how you all have those notebooks with you," Eunsook says, pointing an accusing finger. Gwiboon is sitting quietly on the bed, face unreadable. "I've seen your creepy symbols and I know you're all gathering things from the forest. I've seen you!"

Eunsook is breathing hard, her face flushed once more. Her fists are curled at her sides, shaking slightly, tiny tremors of anger and fear coursing through her. And it's such a contrast to Gwiboon who's calm and composed and _still sitting_ and Eunsook just wants to go over and shake her until she does _something_.

"Is that what you think?"

Gwiboon's voice is soft and unwavering and Eunsook imagines she can hear something accusatory lurking beneath the surface. As Gwiboon lifts her head, it occurs to Eunsook that the two of them had been avoiding each other's eyes. Telling herself that she's unafraid, Eunsook meets Gwiboon's stare and almost crumples. Gwiboon is mad and maybe a little hurt.

 _Yeah_ , Eunsook wants to say. _That's what I think_. But as she opens her mouth, nothing but a small rush of breath comes out.

"Will you give me a chance to explain or are you going to continue making assumptions?" Gwiboon asks, hands clasped tightly in her lap now.

Feeling chastised, Eunsook says, "I'll listen." She sits at the desk, unable to bring herself to sit next to Gwiboon again until everything is said and done. It feels a little like cowardice and a lot like running away.

When Gwiboon opens her mouth again, it is to explain to Eunsook about energy and feeling life and power coursing beneath her skin. She tells her about magic and how they use it as a force of good in the world and how, yes, they're witches but that there's all sorts. Eunsook listens raptly, enthralled and confused, as Gwiboon tells her about their connection to nature and harnessing the magic in themselves to create good things, to help others, to change. Gwiboon grabs her notebook and lets Eunsook look through it, watching carefully as Eunsook thumbs through the pages and realizes that the creepy symbols she thought she saw were for protection, safe travels, peaceful sleep and, as she traces her fingers over the sharp, weaving lines, that they're not creepy at all.

And all at once, Eunsook feels like a silly, foolish child.

The door squeaks noisily, its hinges creaking as Junghee pushes it open slowly and peeks her head inside. She scans the room and her eyes fall on the two girls on the bed, her gaze lingering on Eunsook before shifting to Gwiboon. The two of them seem to be communicating with only looks and Eunsook looks back and forth between them nervously before Junghee apparently decides that everything is safe. Behind her, Minjung and Taeyeon step into the cabin, their cheeks and noses pinkened from the chill outside.

A warm, sweet scent drifts in with them, and the effect is almost instantaneous on Eunsook; she calms, breathing in the soothing smell deeply and releasing the last bit of tension she had held in her. The three other girls, hair still damp from their showers, linger cautiously around the door before Gwiboon gives them a small smile. Taking this as some sort of signal, Taeyeon drops her towel on the floor and flops beside Gwiboon. There's a slight static charge in the air, the feeling of tentative uncertainty floating around them all, but as Minjung begins brushing Taeyeon's hair, Junghee tells them about the raccoon that got into the bathroom and knocked the trash can over. The feeling dispels, bit by bit, until Eunsook relaxes again.

In hindsight, it didn't make sense for Eunsook to have confronted Taeyeon about this as if she wasn't a part of it herself but, well - that's only something that Eunsook will realize later with a hot jolt of embarrassment. (The fact that Gwiboon doesn't bring up the conversation after that is in her favor but she avoids Minjung's teasing smile for the entirety of the next day.)

She shouldn't have doubted them.

-

Junghee grew up as a bit of an unusual girl.

She can't exactly say that she was raised knowing of magick, but it's not as if it was hidden from her either. Her mother taught her and her sister, from a very young age, how to protect themselves with lavender, garden balsam, and the biting smell of anise. It had all seemed like fun little things to Junghee, just another way for her and her sister to play together and smell pretty and become a sprite of the Earth like the ones in the stories their mother read to them at night.

The fact that none of the other kids did almost any of the same things as she did probably should have clued her in to the fact that it was different.

 _Weird_ , they tried to tell her.

But they did enough; when those kids dyed their nails, it meant only legends about true love, and when they wore brightly colored stones it was because it was pretty and new. Junghee never really minded. She enjoyed coming home to be greeted by the cool smell of sage as her sister tugged her into the backyard to collect flowers, she liked seeing the squiggly lines carved into the wood of the tables or the doorframes. If the others would make fun of her for having herbs sprinkled into her shoes, well, then they didn't have to know about that.

It was a little scary, when she realized how different she was. It was even scarier when she realized that some people thought she was dangerous, that _she_ was the scary one. But Junghee feels at home when her quartz sits heavy in the middle of her chest. Its weight reminds her of her mother, of home, of love and protection.

-

The weather has two moods: warm and sunny, and a gloomy kind of mist. Sometimes these two seem to mingle and spread into one single sky before one side wins out. It's usually the clouds. But Eunsook doesn't mind. The only time it really gets cold is at night and she's in bed then anyway. There are lights around the grounds and on the paths, but they are dim and flickering and almost useless when the true fog rolls in at night.

It's not the cabin itself that seems to change, or even the grounds themselves. (Maybe.) It's the atmosphere around it all; things had seemed sunnier and more inviting in the beginning. It seems almost like a trick now, when the woods are more mysterious and there's not a soul to be found but the ones she's looking for. But where things are shrouded in mystery, Eunsook feels too like she knows them better. The forest is certainly no longer a scary place, but a familiar and comforting one. She knows it holds more secrets than she'd thought, but she's not afraid to go discover them.

When she first arrived, she would go off on her own but she never really explored. The difference is, after she made friends with the other girls and truly settled in for the first time, the forest seemed to open up to her. And while she certainly doesn't know everything there is to know about the camp, something about the grounds have struck an adventurous chord in her and she spends most of her time outside, in the trees and by the water.

The air never quite gets cloudy enough to be called fog. Mist fills the grounds, seeping out from between the trees and leaking over the grass and the dirt trails. The resulting effect is that everything is constantly damp outside, even in the sunshine, and there are muddy streaks that stand out in stark contrast against Taeyeon's boots. Eunsook's white sneakers are pretty much ruined beyond repair, but they were old anyway.

The paths leading around the camp are lined with stones and waterlogged wood thrown together in some semblance of a fence. Taeyeon often sits on these barriers, perched on the edge like some sort of disgruntled mess of a fairy. Eunsook is quite certain that one day the wood will collapse beneath her and leave her in a pile of limbs on the ground. She has yet to be proven right.

Some of these paths lead around the camp, to the office or the small and unused amphitheatre or the mass of cabins that Eunsook has never stepped foot inside. Other paths, though, lead into the forest, winding and sloping through the trees or twisting down to the lake. Eunsook hasn't taken every one of these paths, but Minjung has assured her that they'll explore every one of them. "Leave no stone unturned," she murmured, eyes twinkling mysteriously at Eunsook. Still others lead to paths unknown with no visible end in sight. There are no signs to tell the way but none of them have ever gotten lost - at least not without intending to.

-

Deep in the forest, Taeyeon pulls her into trees and they look for foxes. Taeyeon has a keen eye, sharper than the rest of them, and can somehow spot any and all forms of life in the forest. Eunsook doesn't know how she does it. But Taeyeon's hand is strong - stronger than it seems it should be - as she hoists Eunsook onto a higher branch with her. Her pants are already filthy, covered in dirt and dust and bark and sap, and she pays it absolutely no mind as she swipes her hair out of her face with a dirty hand.

Eunsook perches close to the trunk, keeping a hand on a high branch for balance. She'd be better at this with a bit more practice, she thinks, and watches Taeyeon climb a bit higher looking, for all of her grace, like some sort of curious house cat. Her hair is a tangled, silver mess around her face, glinting like fishing wire knotted around some sort of strange fish.

Taeyeon teaches her how to listen for the foxes, how to spot their colors amongst the thick underbrush of the forest floor. She speaks somehow both grandly and matter-of-fact-like, in hushed tones like they're looking for some mysterious, otherworldly creature.

As Eunsook loses herself in staring out at the vastness of light and green and _life_ , she loses her sense of time too. Somewhere along the way, it becomes misplaced and, quite before Eunsook knows it, the light has shifted and sits lower than she last remembers it. When she looks up, Taeyeon is dozing against the tree trunk, one of her arms dangling down.

With a profound sense of fondness, Eunsook reaches up and tugs on the ends of Taeyeon's fingers.

-

Minjung sort of stumbled into witchcraft completely by accident.

She remembers one day when she was in high school and both her parents were away; her brother had brought some of his friends over. When Minjung slipped away from her homework and into the kitchen for a snack, she saw them sitting in the living room, spread in a loose circle, an open book and a laptop in the middle of them.

Abandoning her quest for a snack, Minjung crept behind the counter and hid, watching, as her brother and his friends poured over the book, checking the contents of it against their open palms. Minjung stared at her own hand, eyes darting back and forth in confusion between the appendage and the scene before her.

"What are you doing?" she asked eventually, stepping out into the living room.

Five heads whipped around to stare at her; Minseok in particular had an incredulous look on his face as if he'd forgotten she was there completely. But then his expression shifted into something easy and he said, "don't worry about it."

One of his friends pushed him, chastising him, and beckoned Minjung over. Minjung sat next to her uncertainly and the older girl explained basic, shaky, palmistry to her. She was included then, sitting in the circle and staring at her palm, sifting through a confusing amount of text to learn something about her future.

When several of them broke for drinks, Minjung was brought back into the present.

"Why did you guys get this book?" she asked, casting around to those who remained in the living room.

"Why not?" asked one of the boys, shrugging.

And the thought, _why not, indeed_ whispered to Minjung for the remainder of the day. Her journey was slow, her progress and learning halted by the distraction of spiraling into a new world that was far vaster than she ever expected. The thing that caught her eye the most was scrying and, after hours of pouring over articles, Minjung felt a seed dig into her, a comforting sort of yearning that felt like it had been there long before she'd ever noticed. What had started as a whim, as just something to do to pass the time, turned into something even more.

Minjung began to surround herself with magick then, almost before she even knew what she was doing. Oils, incense, charms, and always - _always_ \- her precious deck of tarot cards. To her, magick is a savior, a treasure.

-

They don't have a window cove, not exactly. The space isn't large enough to sit down and read, to spread a blanket or a few pillows over. But the sill is noticeably larger than average and perfect for resting your arms on. So, they throw down a blanket and a few pillows on the floor instead and create a little nook with the musty glass and the wooden sill wide enough to lean on.

Other peculiarities of their cabin include the sky light in the bathroom and the floor boards that squeak only when the fog clears. The sky light provides a slim rectangle of light to filter into the bathroom on good days and an unfortunate amount of rain on the bad ones. Eunsook has stared out it as she showered one night, the stars seeming so far away that even their light couldn't make it into the room, lost somewhere in the inky abyss above her. The floor boards on the other hand conveniently let them know when an outing will be profitable. They know this is what the loose, wooden boards mean when they creak because they've tracked it in their journals extensively.

Eunsook likes the girls in her cabin because they are the only ones that seem to realize that the camp is strange. She doesn't _mind_ that it's strange, she just wanted someone else to acknowledge it so that she wasn't the only one. Eunsook hasn't really spoken to any of the other people at camp (even when she saw them around Before) but no one seems to really know where exactly they are or where they're from. _She_ knows where she's from, but she's not sure anyone else does. None of them mention the name of the town they live in, but Eunsook has a feeling that they're the only ones that know it exists at all. She'd never heard of the camp before and neither had her parents, but that doesn't mean anything right? Taeyeon makes an offhand mention that she'd never heard of the camp before either, but Eunsook doesn't bring it up to her.

-

Sometimes, Eunsook will wake up in the middle of the night and walk outside, thermos in hand, and walk in the light of the moon. She'll see Junghee there, bathed in starlight and shadows, head tipped back to the sky to trace constellations and the curves of the moon with her eyes. Eunsook will sit next to her, pajama pants too thin to protect her from the bite of the cold, and Junghee will hold her arm out, allowing Eunsook to duck into her blanket and nestle beside her.

Junghee looks beautiful beneath the light of the moon, the clear, blue tinted light making everything about her dreamy and unreal. The moon is high above, unfettered by buildings or trees and the light it casts is not warm, but it's beautiful anyway. It's always cold at night, the mist always eating into Eunsook's skin and making her feel frozen down to the bone. The tips of her fingers ache from it, feeling numb and raw, and her cheeks sting from the cold that settles there. And still, Junghee looks beautiful there. The mist catches in her hair, making it sparkle and dampen and press cool in Eunsook's cheek when Junghee rests her head against Eunsook's shoulder.

Sometimes she stays awake and listens to the wind and the sound of chattering silence surrounding them, sometimes she's woken a while later by Junghee's gentle hand and a whispering insistence to go back inside before she gets too cold. And sometimes she wakes in her bed, knowing only by Minjung's muddy shoes and the stains of dirt smeared around the bottom hems of her pajama pants that the other girl had carried her back inside.

Tonight, Eunsook listens to Junghee's voice as the girl tells her a story. In the morning, she won't remember what the story was about, but she'll remember what Junghee's hands felt like as she held Eunsook's. She'll remember the warm, dry feeling of Junghee's palm and the way Junghee's nails tickled as she brushed her fingertips over the back of Eunsook's hand. Mostly, she'll remember the soft, comforting way Junghee spoke, as if the story was only ever for Eunsook.

No one else ever joins them outside or sits beside them on the old bench covered in moss. They are surrounded by nothing but quiet noise and quiet life and a heavy, scratchy woolen blanket. Eunsook's hair is laden down with a thick layer of mist as they head back to the cabin, the tips of her ears feeling like they're about to crack off, and her shoes covered in a papier mache of trodden on leaves. Junghee is beside her, their shoulders bumping comfortably with every other step over the dirt path.

The moon watches them go, bright and familiar.

-

Time is weird there.

It moves slowly; Eunsook's not sure whether or not it _actually_ moves slowly or just _seems_ like it moves slowly but either way, time passes slowly there. She has a watch that she brought with her, a thin white strapped little wrist-watch with a round, light blue clock face that she's had since middle school. She wears it every day but she never seems to remember to check it and, when she does, she can never remember what time it was last or why it even matters in the first place.

She's learned from Minjung how to tell the time from the sun and from Junghee how to make a guess when you're in the forest. They're always right. So, she's learned to trust their judgement and leave behind her temporal worries because the only schedule they have is the one they make, seeing as how they're the only ones that seem to be around the camp anyway. She forgets to mark the days off on her calendar, but she knows that their time there is coming to an end soon.

Cell phones seem not to work very well and she's never gotten a signal anyway and, after the first week, she hasn't bothered to try to find a landline. She thinks she remembers seeing something about being able to send and receive letters but, if anyone has ever done it, she hasn't seen it because she hasn't really seen much of anyone. Eunsook writes a letter to her parents one night but doesn't send it. She gets stuck on what to say and figures " _hey mom and dad, I ran away to the forest and joined a coven_ " won't really cut it.

-

Gwiboon was fifteen years old when she learned what she could do with just a pen. She'd always heard "the pen is mightier than the sword" but never had she believed until then how literal that was. She has always been an individual, she's always stood out. Maybe some of that came from insecurity and maybe some of it came from a desire to overcome that, but regardless, the first thing that drew her in was the _look_.

There's a certain air about witches, a certain amount of power that radiates from them and commands something. Of course, Gwiboon didn't know any witches, or maybe they weren't even real, but her interests changed like the wind and it was time to move on to a new fixation. When she saw a new type of fashion online, it drew her in. If Gwiboon was going to stand out anyway, she was going to do it as she does in everything else - with style. She chopped her hair off to go along with it, the pitch-black ends curling in gently, perfectly, at the curve of her jaw. Gwiboon knew she was a striking figure, standing in high relief in comparison to the more cautious, practical appearance of those around her.

Everything else followed shortly after.

Gwiboon does not do things frivolously; after seeing what witches could look like, she lost herself in learning what magick was, what it _really_ was. Energy, intention, sigils and rituals and a complicated sort of simplicity that captivated her. It was the sigils, these sometimes intricate or sometimes entirely barren markings, ink and chalk and graphite and painted symbols that caught her eye. And she could make them.

She quickly found a book to hold all of them, those that she found and those that she created, to keep all of them at her fingertips. Gwiboon has always been the artistic sort. She likes working with her hands and is fond of the act of creation, of the knowledge that she has pulled shapes and lines from thin air and made them _mean something_. The interest in fashion that started it all comes and goes, her clothing changing once more. But the book stays with her, tucked away safely.

-

The air is soupy and heavy, wrapping warm and constricting around her like a wool blanket. It's a strange contrast to the icy chill she knows will flood the air later, seeping in beneath the cabin door insistently. There's a sense of lethargy that Eunsook can see infecting the woods. She looks over at Minjung dozing beside her, hair pushed haphazardly away from her face and tangled in between the strands of grass around her head.

Tipping her head back, Eunsook watches the light dance between the leaves, flashing brightly across her vision in a slightly dizzying staccato. Deep in the distance, a bird call echoes through the trees and the rustling of a small animal through the dried, fallen leaves sounds somewhere to her left. Eunsook closes her eyes and lets the sun wash over her, lets it weigh against her and bring her down until her back touches the ground beside Minjung. The whisperings of a breeze dance over her, making her bangs tickle against her forehead. Eunsook breathes in deeply and listens to the forest

When she opens her eyes, it is to the disorienting realization that time has passed much without her following along. Eyes still closed, Eunsook immerses herself in passively becoming a part of the forest floor. She is threading her fingers into the grass beneath her hands when she feels gentle fingertips slipping into her hair. The fingers weave and dip, moving softly, and Eunsook holds her breath and concentrates on lying very still. Minjung's hands are absentminded and curious, tugging sections of her hair into thin, trailing braids. A piece of her hair flops into her face and Minjung's hands still as Eunsook's eyelids flutter before finally opening.

They stare at each other, Minjung's hair trailing over the sides of her face like waterfall, pouring down and stopping before her. She's leaning over Eunsook, hands still tangled in Eunsook's hair, and Eunsook is struck by the candid look of surprise on Minjung's face in the moment before her expression morphs into a comfortable smile.

Minjung tucks a flower behind her ear, grinning at her in such a lazy, contented way that it makes Eunsook's breath catch in her chest.

-

It's Taeyeon who gives her the choker. She can tell because the ribbon is the same type as the ones that Taeyeon always wears; this one is a deep blue with a small silver pentagram dangling from it. Eunsook sees it when she returns to the room and figures that Taeyeon must have dropped it on top of Eunsook's pillow while she was in the shower.

Eunsook sweeps her hair aside and fastens the ribbon around her neck, struggling with the clasp for a moment before it slots into place. The cool metal sits in the divot of her neck, a small weight with a heavy, reassuring reminder of how she's changed in so short of a time. If she had any doubts about the gift being from Taeyeon, they would have all been dashed the moment she meets the other girls for breakfast.

They each look approving but there is a satisfied lift to the ends of Taeyeon's smile, like the cat that got the cream and has a warm strip of sunshine all to herself. Eunsook promises herself to wear it every day, even when she returns home, as a sign to herself.

The dining hall clears out quickly, Eunsook having arrived later than usual, and they rush through breakfast, glancing around like they have something to hide. Back in their cabin, they pack a picnic from the food they snuck out of the dining hall - which was unnecessary because no one besides them was even there in the first place to see them do it. Still, they giggle like they have a secret to hide and make their way into the forest to find a large enough patch of ground to lay down a couple blankets.

The sun is filtering through the trees, casting flickering, magnetic shapes of light across their faces and arms and legs and Eunsook stares, entranced, at the beams that dance over the other girls' hair. They eat, chatting and laughing freely and Eunsook, surrounded by trees and four girls that she hadn't known all that long ago, feels more comfortable in her skin than she can ever remember.

Later, they move, packing up their things and crossing through the forest, darting through trees and sidestepping roots. They arrive at the lake, as they usually do in one way or another.

On the shore, Junghee absentmindedly draws little shapes in the dirt. Eunsook is sitting on the ground next to Minjung by the water's edge and they're staring out at the water. Minjung is speaking softly, the sweet, sharp scent of citrus and almond wafting through the air as Eunsook lets herself sort of drift into an almost dreamlike state. Taeyeon is off somewhere collecting sticks and stones and bones, or whatever it is that she finds by the shore and between the trees roots, and Gwiboon has a leather-bound notebook open in front of her, perched carefully on her knees as she sketches something.

Eunsook likes to sit beside the lake and watch the water with Minjung. When the day is bright, they stare at the clouds and find shapes and stories hidden there. The calls of birds echo across the lake like a ripple of water, breaking through the air with an enthusiastic insistence. Minjung shows her caterpillars and moths and stick bugs and they search for cicadas in the trees, the sun beating down on them with a kind of intensity that will seem impossible later.

And when the sky turns cloudy and dark, mist rolling through the tops of trees and leaving their clothes damp and their hair speckled with tiny water droplets, they look out at the water and lose themselves in the endless mirror reflected back at them. Minjung will pull a scarf out of her bag and wrap it around both of their necks, their faces pressed cheek to cheek, and Eunsook can feel the cold nipping at her nose but it pales in comparison to the warm of Minjung's hand around hers.

Taeyeon joins them then, face smudged with dirt, leaves and cobwebs trapped in the ends of her hair. Eunsook pulls them out for her as Taeyeon drapes herself across her and Minjung's outstretched legs. Gwiboon and Junghee are somewhere just past the tree line combing through the underbrush. When they join Eunsook and the others by the lake, a small bundle carefully wrapped and ready to be placed in Minjung's bag, Eunsook rises.

The path is terribly lit and they all stumble more than once back through the campgrounds. Through the trees, only the rush of wind can be heard, cold and merciless as they trudge past the office, the dining hall, dark cabins. Like a shining beacon, the light above their cabin door guides their way, illuminating the meticulously constructed wreath.

 _Home_ , she thinks.

-

The moon is the darkest Eunsook's ever seen it. In fact, as she searches blackened sky for it, it is nowhere to be found.

They bathe before they go out that night, meditative and slow, each of them lost in thought and the smell of jasmine. When they dress and go out, they are careful to wrap themselves up to protect against the cold. Eunsook supposes they must make an odd, mismatched sight if there were to see them, to see Eunsook in her long skirts or Taeyeon swathed in darkness or Gwiboon's bright red coat. But there is no one around and the sky is quiet.

The air is crisp and biting, but it smells clean and new outside. Eunsook feels strange, to be out so late, the stars above her while the ends of her hair are still damp and the taste of toothpaste is still on her tongue. Minjung's boots pound a comforting rhythm into the ground as they walk. All is quiet and, at the same time, not; owls call out in the distance, hooting softly, there is the quiet scampering of some small creature rustling through the leaves, a gentle and insistent breeze pushes between leaves and branches and their hair.

Eunsook's skirt catches against her legs as she walks, brushing over the tops of particularly large roots and tugging against her as she passes in between bushes and tall grass. She can hear the sound of shoes crunching over leaves and snapping twigs, can feel the warmth of a soft hand in hers. Despite the cold, the air around her feels like and clear. She feels almost like she's floating.

Junghee had told them all to give careful thought to their wishes for this and Eunsook has spent the last several days reflecting on what is important to her. She knows she's been quieter lately because of it but none of the other girls have bothered her about it. She's thankful; this is a big deal to her and she hasn't figured out yet why that is. But she's not too bothered about it, enthralled instead by the prospect of being a part of something this special.

The clearing they choose is open and flat, surrounded by trees reaching impossibly high above their heads. Eunsook keeps to the side mostly, helping when directed by Gwiboon and observing otherwise. Their movements are languid and comfortable and Eunsook has a kind of ache in her at that that she can't explain. The smell of sage wraps around her, burning this moment into her memory.

All in all, their ritual is both life changing and altogether very simple.

They do everything exactly as Taeyeon had said they should and their faces are all shining with hope and dreams of what the future will bring, but it feels so natural that Eunsook is surprised by how much she's not surprised by it. She felt magickal. She felt like she was a part of something that she'd never dreamed would feel not only good, but _right_.

It's the first time all of it feels real and the thought sends a shiver of electricity through her.

Their voices are light and happy as they make the trek back to their cabin, Junghee's laughter riding on the wind. Eunsook finds it easy to chat as they return, the heavy sense of importance that she felt before having given way to something weightless and bubbly. It is Gwiboon's hand in hers now, Minjung's warmth at her back. Eunsook feels surrounded and content, a profound sense of magick zipping beneath her skin and sitting, clear and strong, in her chest.

While the others change and huddle beneath the covers, falling quickly asleep, Eunsook pulls out her book of shadows and sits at her desk, carefully writing. She has been filling out the journal that Minjung had given her dutifully and enthusiastically, and this was certainly something she wanted to remember. By the light of a dying flashlight, Eunsook records everything about the ritual in as much detail as she can possibly muster.

-

From a half-concealed path, there's a field of wildflowers that Gwiboon likes to take Eunsook to. The ground is covered in pale yellow blossoms that seem to part for them as they wade through, looking for that clear patch of grass. They find it and Eunsook pulls Gwiboon down. She lands, off balance, in Eunsook's lap and pushes her backwards onto the ground, laughing.

Eunsook wraps her arms around Gwiboon and brings her down with her with a laugh of her own. They lie in the grass, staring up at the sky through the trees. It's a light blue, the kind of day that suggests that it will be not too hot and not too cold, but an in-between, wandering sort of day. The tiny flowers look beautiful curled around the crown of Gwiboon's head, standing out starkly against her dark hair.

With all of the flowers surrounding them, it doesn't take long before Gwiboon sets to work on braiding Eunsook's hair. She has a habit of weaving flowers into it and since Eunsook has the longest hair, it's usually her who becomes Gwiboon's canvas. Eunsook sits back on her hands and lets them wander, picking out the flowers she sees fit and laying them in a haphazard pile beside her for Gwiboon to use.

Gwiboon is telling her about the two dogs she has at home and how much she misses them. Eunsook, who has never had any pets save for a lonely fish when she was thirteen, listens with rapt attention, eventually picking far too many flowers for Gwiboon to use. As Gwiboon keeps guiding her hair into precise braids, Eunsook begins a shaky daisy chain. Junghee had shown her how to do it once, but Eunsook is still trying to get the hang of it.

She completes it long after Gwiboon has already finished her hair and pulled out her book of shadows. Gwiboon is carefully pressing a flower in between the pages, marking down a few words for reference. She looks up when Eunsook calls her name and accepts the shoddy bracelet around her wrist with a sincere smile.

Eunsook catches sight of Gwiboon's creation after they've returned to the cabin. Some of her hair falls in wisps around her face, pulled free be the wind. But the flowers are still in place, tucked away precisely in her braids. Eunsook feels something tugging at her chest, and it's all so beautiful and fairy-like and such a wonderful contrast to the pentagram choker hanging from her neck.

-

Taeyeon was a weird child, so it was only natural that, after seeking out magick purely out of curiosity, she threw herself out there and tumbled right into it head first.

It started with a game. Bunshinsaba was a game that everyone knew and almost everyone in Taeyeon's class had played it. Taeyeon wasn't afraid of ghosts or stories or superstition, so she'd played it a lot with friends without too much thought. But one day, when she was watching her classmates play it, the pencil moved. Rather than being frightened, Taeyeon was thrilled. After going home that night, she dove into research about the occult, staying up until the sun began to peek through the curtains of her bedroom window.

From there it spiraled and she found magick, a power that she could channel through movement and placement and her own will. And for the first time, it didn't seem like she'd thrown herself into something weird at all. No, it was as if she'd found something she hadn't known she'd been looking for the whole time.

Taeyeon is quiet and introverted and powerful. There's a drama about the way she goes through rituals, a heightened sense of emotion that crackles through her body and flows through her fingertips. She dabbles in other bits of witchcraft, she has to when she works on her own, but her heart always comes back to the performance of a ritual. To her, this is where she feels the magick the strongest, in bringing it fully to life from all the pieces and parts that have power on their own but have a resonance even greater when they all come together. She takes everything they give her and turns it into a new magick all of its own.

-

Eunsook doesn't really remember hearing about the camp. She thinks, one day, she was walking around town and was handed a variety of fliers by an old woman - or maybe it was a young boy? She can't remember. But she remembers when she first looked at the flier with the name of the camp emblazoned on it in shining golden letters. A strong breeze blew in through her open window and swept up beneath the papers on her desk. After she picked them up from the ground, she turned to put them back on her desk and saw the only one that had remained.

Something about it drew her to it and she picked up the flier instead, gripping it gently in her hands. She's still not sure, even when she'd returned home, why she wanted to go to the camp so badly. But once she'd seen the flier, she couldn't seem to break away from the idea and made up her mind. Eunsook, in a very odd fashion, had everything all packed before it even occurred to her that she should probably tell her parents where she was going.

When Eunsook first decided to go to this camp she told her parents she was going to be going on a school or club related outing. Maybe like membership training, maybe something for a class, maybe she even told them she'd applied to be a counselor at the camp so that they'd expect her to be busy. But they don't ask many questions, just tell her to pack sunscreen and bug spray and plenty of warm clothing. Once she had their well wishes, Eunsook didn't find the need to come up with any more of a cover story and decided that she'd just wing it when she returned home again.

The camp is "about" a month long. "About", because there's no set dates for it to end and her parents hadn't asked. But by the time "about" a month has passed, Eunsook and the other girls know that it's their time to leave. She's not really sure how they know this but she can feel it; the air is heavier and cooler, and it seems to be pushing her away. Before they leave, they all exchange numbers and plan to meet up again even though they never really talked about where they live.

Eunsook can feel it though - she's going to see them again.


End file.
